THE ANGELINA EFFECT

摘要

There's a Chilly arithmetic to the way we all get sick. At the end of any year, a fixed and knowable number of us will have developed heart disease, and another number won't have. There will be a different entry in the ledger for cancer, another for lung disease, another for Parkinson's or dementia or HIV. The people who study those mortal metrics-the actuaries, the epidemiologists-don't give, too much thought to the individuals behind the numbers, and the truth is, they can't. It's no good sentimentalizing math-not if you want to get anything useful out of it.